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How Do You Deal with This Much Nonsense?

"You have to admit that’s quite an array of nations seeking to leave young Jared wearing a barrel." (Photo: Getty)

This simply can’t go on. I say this to myself every day when I first open the doors to the shebeen and take stock of what’s going on down at Camp Runamuck on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Republic was built to withstand a lot of things, but it was not designed to be run by the likes of President* Trump and his family of grifters, freeloaders, and silver-spoon incompetents. It is not structured to withstand simultaneous avalanches of greed, dishonesty, and rank idiocy. Its immune system is not set up to handle this many different poisons and infections at once. Jesus H. Christ on a morphine drip, can’t we have one day of remission?

Apparently not. The Washington Post fairly well teed up Senior Presidential Adviser and obvious White House merit hire Jared Kushner as both a threat to national security and as a sucker that various satraps and oligarchs can see coming from a mile off. From Reuters:

Officials from China, the United Arab Emirates and at least two other countries privately talked about ways they could control Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, a Washington Post report said on Tuesday, citing current and former U.S. officials. The foreign officials, also from Israel and Mexico, sought to take advantage of Kushner’s business arrangements, financial difficulties, and lack of foreign policy experience, according to unnamed U.S. officials the report said were familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

You have to admit that’s quite an array of nations seeking to leave young Jared wearing a barrel. (Israel? I mean, really, Mexico? No wonder they haven’t paid for The Wall yet.) This, of course, is cited as one of the reasons that Kushner lost the top security clearance he never should have had in the first place. But does anyone really believe that the president* will abide by this decision? My guess? He and Jared will be chatting over the presidential daily briefing paper by the middle of next week. Hell, somebody in the White House has to read the thing.

And there is the big, trumpeting elephant in the middle of the Oval Office. Every good reason to keep Jared Kushner’s grasping little paws off vital national security information also applies quite well to the current president* of the United States. Business arrangements? Check. Financial difficulties? Check? Lack of foreign policy experience? Many, many checks.

Also, too: vulnerable to pressure and/or blackmail? Well, yes, thank you. Why did you ask? By that criterion, Jared Kushner is a rank amateur. But an enthusiastic one. From Reuters again:

Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials that he did not officially report or coordinate through official channels, the report said. The foreign officials’ beliefs of Kushner’s vulnerabilities were items raised in McMaster’s daily intelligence briefings, the report said.

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Charles P. Pierce is a writer-at-large for Esquire and his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the LA Times Magazine, the Nation, the Atlantic, Sports Illustrated and The ChicagoTribune, among others.

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While waiting alongside other administration officials and lawmakers before a scheduled event at the White House on Thursday morning, a live video stream captured what appeared to be billionaire capitalist and U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross scraping something from the corner of his eye and then putting it in his mouth. Seemed like an eye booger, but impossible to know for sure. Pretty sure U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross just ate an eye booger on national television. No big deal, but...

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